Hitchhiking Adventures – Part 7

At that parking place I was now able to speak to other drivers, who were taking a break, to ask them for a ride. I walked up to a man of about 50 years and asked if he would take me with him in his car. He was nervous and was struggling, but he agreed. A little later we started heading west. He told me that he had never taken a hitchhiker before, but that he saw how nicely me and my last driver said goodbye to each other, so I couldn’t be that bad.

I asked him where he was going. He said: “I don't know, I’m just going west. I work in a factory around here. This morning my vacation started. I got into my car like each summer to go east to visit my sister and her family. After I started driving, I made a decision. No, I'm not going east this year, this time I'm going west.”

Like a boy, he was excited about his big new adventure, and now even with a hitchhiker at his side. He was so happy he was going to do everything differently this summer. He didn’t stop talking. He told me about his life that was more interesting than I expected in the beginning.

He was a country musician in the early days. As a young man, he was traveling a lot with his band, giving concerts. They made good money and spent everything very quickly, gave it away, had a lot of girls and parties. “Once, I bought a car and gave it to one of the girls,” he told me.

At first, it was difficult for me to believe him because he was so conservative and, in a way, naive. He was so excited about spending holiday on his own. It was difficult to see in him the person that he described, a young musician who didn’t care about tomorrow.

But a little later he started to sing and I was impressed by the very first tone. He was an amazing singer. He sang with this typical high country voice.

I don’t remember if he told me why his career failed and what happened to his band. In any case, his life changed a lot and from what I heard it became incredibly boring until that day when he decided not to go east, but west. We spent almost two days together. He smuggled me into his motel room without paying for me extra. He was so excited about this. He probably felt like he was back in the old days, when he was on tour with his band.

He said: “Wait behind the car until no one is looking, and after I enter the room, run to the door.” It was the same procedure the next morning when we went back to the car. We left and we felt like we just successfully robbed a bank.

I was glad that I was advancing on my journey so quickly with him and even had a roof over my head that night. He loved telling jokes as we drove west on this nearly endless highway across Canada. It was a bit exhausting for me to listen to his jokes all the time because I didn't think they were very funny or I just didn't understand them. But I felt, after each joke, I had to react somehow: “Ha-ha, yes, yes, how funny. That was a good one.” After a while I found a solution.

When I got too tired of his jokes, I asked him to sing another song. He liked that and he knew many beautiful country songs. I also understood what great country songs there were, with really good stories about workers’ rights, big dreams, independency, and rebellion, and not just songs about him and her and whether they’d get together.

But what really got on my nerves was this. Every few kilometres there was a sign saying “Attention, Moose” along the highway. And every time, and I think it really was every single time, though I probably exaggerate (but just a little bit), he happily shouted: “Moose, moose, come on, moose, moose, moose, where are you!”

Yes, and we finally saw a moose, right next to the highway.